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Additinal Credits

Video

Photographer Statement

Garth Lenz is an award winning photographer and a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Garth’s work from the Canadian boreal and the Alberta Tar sands has won recent major awards at the International Photography Awards and the Prix de la Photographie Paris and has appeared in recent issues of Canadian Geographic, GEO Germany and GEO International.

A large selection of this work is currently touring in a major solo exhibition.

http://www.garthlenz.com

http://garthlenz.photoshelter.com/

License

To license this work for editorial, creative, or other uses, click on the OZMO logo above.

This will take you to the Ozmo website where you can review the cost and license for the photographs in this exhibit.

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Located just 70 miles downstream from the Alberta Tar Sands, the Athabasca Delta is the world's largest freshwater delta. It lies at the convergence of North America’s four major flyways and is a critical stopover for migrating waterfowl and considered one of the most globally significant wetlands.

The Alberta Tar Sands, the world’s most environmentally damaging and toxic project, represent the world’s second largest oil reserves, and are America’s single largest source of oil. Since September 11th 2001, the resulting high cost and demand of oil, and the desire for "secure" - non midddle east oil - energy by the U.S. has promoted and made possible the creation of this massive development.

The neighboring Peace Athabasca Delta, the world’s largest freshwater delta, and the surrounding boreal forest, are being systematically destroyed to mine the tar that lies underneath. Plans are to increase production of the Tar Sands from 1.5 million barrels to five million barrels of oil per day within the next 20 years, industrializing an area the size of Florida in the process. The boreal forest is the world’s greatest carbon sink and tar sands oil produces almost twice as much carbon as tradition sources.

BOREAL FOREST AND WETLAND | Athabasca Delta Northern Alberta | 2010
Located just 70 miles downstream from the Alberta Tar Sands, the Athabasca Delta is the world's largest freshwater delta. It lies at the convergence of North America’s four major flyways and is a critical stopover for migrating waterfowl and considered one of the most globally significant wetlands.

ATHABASCA DELTA AND SLAVE RIVER #1 Athabasca Delta | Northern Alberta | 2010
A tributary of the Slave River winds its way through the vast Athabasca Delta, the world’s largest freshwater delta. A "Ramsar" designated site of international importance, both the toxic impact of the Tar Sands, as well as the vast amounts of water drawn from the Athabasca River which flows into it, threaten its ecological integrity.

MACKAY RIVER, BOREAL FOREST, AND TAR MINE | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
The Boreal Forests and wetlands that surround the Tar Sands are the most carbon rich terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, holding almost twice as much carbon as tropical rainforests. Referred to by the Tar Sands industry as "overburden," these forests are scraped off and the wetlands dredged, to be replaced by tar mines like this.

HIGHWAY TO HELL | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Dubbed by most locals as Hell’s Highway or the Highway of Death, Highway 63 leads directly to the heart of the Alberta Tar Sands and through the center of one of Syncrude’s operations. During shift changes, choked full of exhausted oil workers driving at breakneck speed to get home further south, and contending with massive transport trucks and machinery, the highway is particularly dangerous. Virtually every week, an automobile accident on the highway kills or maims another worker.

TAR MINE AND TRUCK #4 | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
At the edge of an 80-meter deep mine, a massive tar sands truck is dwarfed by the surrounding landscape. These 400-ton trucks are the world’s largest measuring 25 feet high, 47.5 feet long, and 32 feet wide. The mines, machinery, and trucks of the Alberta Tar Sands were the inspiration for Avatar’s Edmonton-born art director’s vision of the mining operation on Pandora.

CROSSROADS | Alberta Tar Sands | 2005
A relatively small section of a massive mine encroaches on the Boreal Forest. With the fivefold proposed expansion of the Tar Sands, an area the size of Florida will be industrialized within as little as two decades.

TAR SANDS AT NIGHT #1 | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Twenty-four hours a day, the Tar Sands eats into the most carbon rich forest ecosystem on the planet. The first reaction of most visitors to the Tar Sands is that the vast mines, tailings ponds, and fire and pollution belching refineries, remind them of nothing more than a vision of Tolkien%u2019s fictional universe of middle-earth Mordor.

REFLECTED SKY IN TAILINGS POND | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Disguised by the beauty of a reflection, these toxic tailings ponds are a considerable health risk. These vast toxic lakes are completely unlined and nearly a dozen of them lie on either side of the Athabasca River. Individual ponds can range in size up to 8,850 acres.

TAILINGS POND ABSTRACT #2 | Alberta Tar Sands / 2010
So large are the Alberta Tar Sands tailings ponds that they can be seen from out space. It has been estimated by Natural Resources Canada that the industry to date has produced enough toxic waste to fill a canal 32 feet deep by 65 feet wide from Fort McMurray to Edmonton, and on to Ottawa, a distance of over 2,000 miles.

MACKAY RIVER FOREST | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Located immediately adjacent to a massive tar mine, forests and wetlands like this are key habitat for a variety of species. The Canadian Boreal is the breeding ground and nursery for almost half of all bird species found in North America.

ASPEN AND SPRUCE | Northern Alberta | 2001
Photographed in late autumn in softly falling snow, a solitary spruce is set against a sea of aspen. The Boreal Forest of northern Canada is perhaps the best and largest example of a largely intact forest ecosystem. Canada's Boreal Forest alone stores an amount of carbon equal to ten times the total annual global emissions from all fossil fuel consumption. Forests like this are being destroyed, their carbon released as they are replace my tar mines that will harvest tar sands oil with a carbon footprint twice that of conventional oil.

ROUGE MOUNTAINS | Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories | 2005
The Mackenzie Valley is the world%u2019s third largest watershed basin. Only the Amazon and Mississippi are larger, but of these, only the Mackenzie is virtually entirely intact. Plans to build the 800-mile Mackenzie Valley Pipeline to bring natural gas from the Beaufort Sea to the Tar Sands would open this remote region to a variety of industrial threats.

CLEARWATER RIVER #1 | Northern Alberta| 2005
Located just east of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the Clearwater joins the Athabasca River as it winds its way north through the Tar Sands, accumulating toxic waste from the vast, unlined, leaching tailings ponds which border it on either side.

SYNCRUDE UPGRADER AND TAR SANDS / Alberta Tar Sands | 2005
The refining or upgrading of the tarry bitumen which lies under the Tar Sands consumes far more water and energy than conventional oil and produces almost twice
as much carbon.

TAR MINE AND ROADS | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Trucks the size of a house look like tiny toys as they rumble along massive roads 80 meters above a mine. The scale of the Tar Sands is truly unfathomable. To date, 4,500 square kilometers have been directly impacted by the mines. Alberta Energy has reported that the landscape being industrialized by rapid Tar Sands development could easily accommodate one Florida, two New Brunswicks, four Vancouvers, and four Vancouver Islands.

ATHABASCA DELTA AND SLAVE RIVER #2 / Athabasca Delta | Northern Alberta | 2010
Located just 70 miles downstream from the Alberta Tar Sands, these waters are threatened by toxins leaching from the tar ponds, and drained of approximately the equivalent of 250,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water

CLEARWATER RIVER #2 | Northern Alberta | 2010
Located just east of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the Clearwater joins the Athabasca River as it winds its way north through the Tar Sands, accumulating toxic waste from the vast, unlined and leaching tailings ponds which border it on either side.

ATHABASCA RIVER, SUNCOR UPGRADER AND TAILINGS PONDS | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Upgraders and tailings ponds line either side of the Athabasca River as it makes its way north to the Athabasca Delta and the indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, where toxins from the Tar Sands have been discovered and where the rates of various cancers are three to seven times the average. Each day, enough toxic sludge is produced to fill 720 Olympic-sized pools. Individual ponds can range in size up to 8850 acres. It has been estimated by Natural Resources Canada that the industry to date has produced enough toxic waste to fill a canal 32 feet deep by 65 feet wide from Fort McMurray to Edmonton, and on to Ottawa, a distance of over 2000 miles.

BLACK CLIFF | Alberta Tar Sands | 2005
Tar Sands pit mining is done in benches or steps. These benches are each approximately 12-15 meters high. Giant shovels dig the tar sand and place it into heavy hauler trucks that range in size from 240 tons to the largest trucks, which have a 400-ton capacity.

BOREAL FOREST AND COAST MOUNTAINS / Atlin Lake, British Columbia | 2000
This area, located in the extreme northwest of British Columbia, marks the western boundary of the Boreal region. On the border of the Yukon and Southeast Alaska, the western flank of these mountains descends into Alaska's Tongass Rainforest and British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. Far from the Tar Sands, the greatest remaining coastal temperate and marine ecosystem is imminently threatened by the proposal to build a 750-mile pipeline to pump 550,000 barrels per day of Tar Sands crude to the coast. Once there, it would be shipped through some of the most treacherous waters, virtually assuring an ecological disaster at some point
in the future.

CONFLUENCE OF CARCAJOU RIVER AND MACKENZIE RIVER | Mackenzie Valley, NWT | 2005
The Caracajou River winds back and forth creating this oxbow of wetlands as it joins the Mackenzie flowing north to the Beaufort Sea. This region, almost entirely pristine, and the third largest watershed basin in the world, will be directly impacted by the proposed Mackenzie Valley National Gas Pipeline to fuel the energy needs of the Alberta Oil Sands mega-project.

TAR SANDS UPGRADER IN WINTER| Alberta Tar / Sands | 2010
The Alberta Tar Sands are Canada's single largest source of carbon, currently producing about as much annually as the nation of Denmark. The refining of the tar-like bitumen requires more water and uses almost twice as much energy as the production of conventional oil, while producing almost twice as much carbon.

DRY TAILINGS #2 | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
In an effort to deal with the problem of tailings ponds, Suncor is experimenting with dry tailings technology. This has the potential to limit, or eliminate, the need for vast tailings pond in the future and lessen this aspect of the Tar Sand%u2019s impact.

REFLECTED SKY IN TAILINGS POND #2 | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
Disguised by the beauty of a reflection, these toxic tailings ponds are a considerable health risk. These vast toxic lakes are completely unlined and nearly a dozen of them lie on either side of the Athabasca River. Individual ponds can range in size up to 8,850 acres.

TAR PIT #3 | Alberta Tar Sands | 2010
The network of roads looks like a claw or tentacles and illustrates to me the way in which the tentacles of the Tar Sands reach out and wreak havoc and destruction. Proposed pipelines to the American Midwest, Mackenzie Valley, and through the Great Bear Rainforest will bring new threats to these regions while the pipelines fuel new markets and ensure the proposed fivefold expansion of the Tar Sands.